Welcome to the Hog Blog, a blog chronicling minor-league baseball in the Lehigh Valley. Tom Housenick, The Morning Call's IronPigs beat writer, has been at The Morning Call since 2008. In a previous lifetime, he was at Lackawanna County Stadium in Moosic talking with future Phillies Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell, Shane Victorino and Ryan Howard, among many others.
He’ll now be spending his summers in search of who the Phillies are hoping to be the next Chase Utley and Cole Hamels plus any outfielder who catch and hit. What he really hopes to find are the next Mariano Rivera, Todd Helton and Jim Thome --- great human beings who happened to be great at this sport.
He spent the last five years covering Colonial League football, college basketball and high school track & field.

We're underway at Coca-Cola Park, and the much-anticipated appearance by Kris Benson.

(Sorry, no signs of Anna...)

Some Phillies fans are hoping (expecting) Benson to be the team's pitching savior in the second half of the season. That point, if it comes, is probably a bit away -- today is Benson's third start in any sort of game since undergoing shoulder surgery that cost him the entire 2007 season -- but much will depend on what the Phillies decide to do with the struggling Brett Myers.

There's all sorts of speculation on what that will be. With an off-day coming up the Phillies could simply skip Myers and give him a week and a half to take a breath and work things out in the bullpen. If they decide to do something a bit more drastic, Benson -- barring unforeseen events -- could be an option.

Benson allowed a first-inning run without a ball leaving the infield (Wayne Lydon reached on an infeild single, stole second and scored from there on a 3-1 groundout) but has looked sharp so far, throwing 26 of his 36 pitches for strikes.

The ironPigs lead 2-1 after two innings behind Oscar Robles, who homered in the first and had an RBI single in the second.